


a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning

by rlb190



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Always a Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Chaos Theory, Chaos has come again, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nogitsune Effects, Platonic Relationships, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Psychological Torture, Sorry Not Sorry, Stiles Stilinski is Not Okay, The Void, Theo is a Little Shit, not really romance but sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rlb190/pseuds/rlb190
Summary: "It’ll be kind of a darkness around your heart. And permanent. Like a scar."Deaton had warned them about the consequences when the pack opened the doors between life and death. Stiles knew the repercussions, and he and the others had to live with their choice every day. But there's something different about the way it affects Stiles. It's not a just a darkness. It's a void.(or, the one in which the Nogitsune makes a reappearance. Or maybe, the one in which he never left)
Relationships: Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin & Stiles Stilinski, Nogitsune/Stiles Stilinski, Theo Raeken & Stiles Stilinski, Void/Stiles
Comments: 1
Kudos: 254





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Please enjoy the story :) I am still in Africa with Doctors w/out Borders, but this story is done. It's a two-part. I was inspired by this Broken Stiles YouTube video here:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VAGpZIyXe4&t=1s
> 
> Banger song, awesome video. 10/10 recommend you check it out. It was on reapeat as I was writing this.
> 
> Title from Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet
> 
> Takes place about season 5.

“I’m starting to wonder if the rules to our supernatural world aren’t as rigid as we once thought.”

* * *

It had all started with one sentence. One idea. One thought. One moment. That’s all it took to bring Stiles Stilinski crumbling down.

It had been quite a while since his days of murder when possessed by the Nogitsune. Things had changed since then. Not just with his dad, or Scott or the pack. Something inside him had changed, too. He sometimes laid awake at night, thinking about what Deaton had said to him, Scott, and Alison in what felt like years earlier;

_ It’ll be kind of a darkness around your heart. And permanent. Like a scar. _

Stiles felt that scar in his heart, every moment of every single say. Some days it was easier to ignore than others, but it was always there. He knew it was, like he knew his tongue was resting in his mouth. HE could forget about it, but it was always there. Sometimes he would just be reminded, you know, that his tongue was there in the first place and he had a hard time finding a resting position for it in his mouth. It was like realizing you needed you blink. Or that you were blinking. Then you can’t stop thinking about the fact that you were blinking, or hadn’t blinked, or maybe you did blink but you’re not sure if you did and you can’t remember if you did.

Yeah. Something like that.

Stiles had tried to push these thoughts to the back of his mind. They had other things to worry about. His character arc, so to speak, was over. They had to deal with new pack members, Liam and Mason and Malia, and they had to deal with Kira getting settled. They had to constantly stop the world from finding out about the supernatural, and they had to somehow keep themselves together. Lydia had to figure out her powers. Scott needed to learn how to be a leader. So Stiles, the human who ran with wolves, did just that. Ran.

When Theo came back into their lives, Stiles felt as though he was hanging on by a thread. Not a feeling or a place of event. He himself was hanging on by a thread. A red thread. Unknown and ready to snap. Yeah, that was him.

There was something about Theo right away that hadn’t sat right with Stiles. When he looked at their old friend,the shell of their old friend, Stiles felt something pull and drop in his stomach. It was dread. It dropped and pulled and lurched the same way when he realized who the Nogitsune was.

Finding the Chimeras, those former people who were suddenly supernatural, had started it all. Stiles, of course, didn’t trust Theo. Scott, of course, did. So, when they went to Deaton with theories of someone creating the supernatural, the veterinarian had said;

_ “I’m starting to wonder if the rules to our supernatural world aren’t as rigid as we once thought.” _

__

Something about that statement didn’t feel right. It unsettled his stomach, like when he had gotten food poisoning when he was a kid. He felt like he was going to spew chunks right then and there. That’s why he had booked it out of there as fast as he could, with some half-baked excuse about needing to look something up. That part wasn’t really a lie, just an excuse.

He had made his way to the high school. It was after hours of course, but that had never stopped Stiles before. Within minutes of parking his beloved Jeep, he was sitting in the dark, chilly library with only a computer’s dim cast illumination.

Next to him was a book of Greek myths, flipped open to a page on chimeras. There was an old drawing, a woodcut, maybe, of a grotesque looking monster. It had a lion’s head, its maw open and bloody. The body was that of a goat, its tail was serpent-like and scaled. He traced the lines of the creature’s face with his fingers, delicately trailing the lines of the lion’s teeth. His nails were bitten down to the nubs. There was dried blood on his thumb. He scraped it off.

_ You opened a door _

__

“Should have closed the door,” he muttered quietly to himself.

This was something that had weighed heavily on his mind for what felt like years. Maybe it was years. The door. It had always been about the door.

When they had been dead, himself and Scott and Allison, when they had been temporary victims of the Nemeton and had accidentally freed the Nogitsune that Noshiko had imprisoned there, Stiles had always wondered if he hadn’t been strong enough. Allison and Scott had done that same thing he did. They each had their own anchors, their own ways of keeping themselves alive and sane. Stiles had failed to do that. He had been weak. Spineless. A coward who couldn’t even figure out how to close a door. That was why the Nogitsune had picked him, he later realized. After everything, the blood and the bombings and the deaths. Stiles was  _ weak _ . He was a warm mass of blood and organs, but still gutless. He was insecure about being the boy who ran with wolves, the human in the pack. Always second-guessing himself, always doubting. The weak human. Always. The Nogitsune had seen that weakness and took advantage of that.

If Stiles hadn’t been there, maybe Allison would still be alive. Maybe if he had been stronger, _ so _ many people would still be alive. Stiles wouldn’t have so much blood on his hands. He had too much blood on his hands. There was an aching in chest when he thought about Allison. Scott’s first love, Lydia’s best friend... When she died, no one really talked about it. It was a delicate subject the pack had danced around since the day it happened. Maybe they thought that bringing it up would bring back painful memories, or that it would cause Stiles to lose it. But the whole  _ not-talking-about-it thing  _ was driving him crazy.

There was a creaking sound in the library. Stiles looked up from the page wearily. It was probably just the library settling, right? That what people told themselves about houses, anyways. A library was technically a house for books. That counted. A slight trickle of fear went down his spine, like a singular cold drop of water was trailing down his back.. That’s when he felt someone grab him by his hair and slam his forehead into the table.

That’s the tricky thing about head injuries. It doesn’t always happen like in the movies. Getting hit in the head in the exact right spot could knock you out, but any other time it just knocked you off your feet and disoriented you, which is probably whoever cracked his skull open tried to do, but it didn’t knock you out. It reminded Stiles of being paralyzed by the Kanima. He knew what was going on around him, for the most part, but he wasn’t able to  _ do _ anything about it.

Stiles went down almost immediately, but he didn’t black out. It was like someone had dissected his brains, scrambled them, and served them to him with a side of bacon. The world when blurry and his eyes crossed. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, just that his head hurt, and he was in deep trouble. He felt something warm and liquid on his face. Was it water? Pee? Oh god, he really hoped it wasn’t pee. Maybe it was blood. He almost would have preferred the pee to the blood.  _ Almost _ . Wait why would there be pee on his face?

He tried to stand up from where he had slumped over onto the floor from his chair, but it was like his muscles were made of jelly and his bones were noodles. He felt squishy, almost.

“Oh no, no. Don’t do that.”

Stiles tried to blink the world into focus. Who had said that? Did someone say that? Did he say that?

He felt phantom hands around his neck, and a sharp prick, but he had trouble placing exactly where the prick was on his body. His veins suddenly felt warm, like the time he had gotten an MRI and they had to inject him with something to make his insides glow when they took the images. He smelled iron. Then he felt nothing.

* * *

Waking up was a bitch and a half. When he opened his eyes, his head ached so badly he thought someone was drilling into it. His sinuses hurt, too. Like someone had stuffed cotton balls up there. He took a second to blink and to catch up with his surroundings. His head was hanging so low, his chin was resting on his chest. He groaned a little as he raised his neck up and his head back until he felt something stop him. A headrest.

He was sitting in a chair like the one you’d find in a dentist office. His wrists were strapped down to the arm rests with a thick band of leather, maybe four inches wide and at least an inch thick. His legs were strapped to either side of the chair, connected to the supple leather seat with anchors. His waist was also secured tightly with a leather strap.

_ Oh fuck. _

_ Oh  _ fuckfuck _ fuckfuckfuckity fuck _

__

It had just dawned on him the gravity of the situation, even through the haze of his head injury. He had some difficulty piecing together how he had gotten there, what exactly happened, but once he realized that he had totally just been Stiles-napped, bile filled his throat. There was a piece of duct tape over his mouth. Cool, so he couldn’t even scream for help. Today was going great.

The room he was in looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, with dim green lights and a metal table with all kinds of horrible, sharp looking instruments that could totally cut his fingers off.

Before he had time to panic, anymore than he had already, someone emerged from behind him, trailing their hand along Stiles’ shoulder as they did. He flinched despite himself.

“You’re lucky they’re allowing me to talk to you. They don’t normally do that.”

Stiles felt his eyes roll. Theo. Of course it was Theo.

The aforementioned asshole stepped in front of Stiles, dressed casually in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, his hands in his pockets. He looked unbothered by the environment. Stiles felt both terrified and vindicated. Sure, he was probably about to die and all, but he had been right about Theo! If he lived to see this through, he would never let it go.

Stiles didn’t even try to speak through the duct tape. He just flashed Theo a look that definitely  _ said I hate you and you suck. _

__

Theo cocked his head.

“They’re not giving me much time. I-, you see these guys believe in numbers. Results,” Theo circled around Stiles like a shark, stopping in front of him, his eyes widened with excitement.

“Power,” he gestured his hands like fireworks, “Real power.”

Stiles tried his hardest to convey nonverbally how annoyed he was with Theo. This crazy psycho had dragged him away into some sort of lab to be…. lectured to? Not to mention this confirmed he was working with the dread doctors, people who went against everything natural in the cosmic order. Theo sighed at Stiles before giving him a smile like Stiles was a little kid who had been caught causing trouble. It was a look that he had seen his father have him many times.

“Oh, Stiles. Don’t worry. There’s a plan for you. For what’s inside of you.”

_ For what’s inside of you. _

__

Stiles felt his stomach lurch. Yeah, he really was about to throw up.

“I didn’t lie when I said I came to Beacon Hills for a pack. But I’m afraid I’m a little selective in who gets to join it.”

Theo leaned in slightly, looked Stiles directly in the eyes.

“You feel it, don’t you? That  _ itch. _ That darkness inside of you,”

_ No. _

__

“The emptiness. The weight on your chest, like you can’t breathe?”

_ Please. _

__

“The void.”

Stiles, in the course of this one-sided conversation, realized several things. The first that no one knew where he was, so he might as well be on his own here. The second was that Theo was an asshole and that he had planned something with the dread doctors, something that involved  _ void. _ The third was that Theo was right. It was there. It had always been there.

Theo reached over and tore the duct tape off Stiles mouth. It stung, and Stiles winced as he did so. His veins still felt warm. They were getting warmer.

“What- what did you do to me?”

Theo was still smiling. Fuck this guy.

“Let me let you in on a little secret, Stiles. The Nogistune possessing you? It set off ripples in the supernatural world. That type of power can’t be ignored. The guys I work for, they tried to find that power. It led them here, to Beacon Hills. To  _ you _ .”

“The Nogitsune is gone,” Stiles said hoarsely. He really felt warm now. He was sweating in the otherwise cool room.

“No, Stiles. It’s not. Come on, you must have figured it out by now. The void? The darkness?”

Stiles felt his blood curl. Goosebumps formed in his skin. It was hard to put into words the way he was feeling. It was the ultimate form of dread and fear and realization and horror. He gagged in reflex. Theo picked up bucket and placed it on the floor on Stiles’ right side. Stiles turned his head to the left and threw up, barfing right on the floor because  _ fuck these guys. _

__

He felt like snakes were twisting his insides as his coughed pathetically, spitting out what little remained in his stomach onto the tile. He was breathing hard, from the vomiting, or maybe from the head injury or the fear. Maybe all three.

Stiles leaned back in his seat.

“He isn’t gone, Stiles.”

Stiles wanted to hurl again as he came to realization. He could barely get the words choked out. His throat burned as the confirmation left his lips.

“He never left.”

"No," said Theo, almost sadly. "He never left."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello i am not dead. I am still in Africa working with Doctors without Borders, so the chapters are gonna be short and rare. I don't really have a plan, so this might end here. Hopefully you've enjoyed the ride!
> 
> xoxo,
> 
> rlb190

“He never left.”

Theo pouted his lips in faux-sympathy and shook his head.

“No. He never really left. The anger, the darkness that you feel is him. That desire you feel. The longing? You crave it. Strife. Pain,” Theo flicked his eyes from the door back to Stiles, “Chaos.”

Stiles was really panicking now, but he was just too warm and now his veins were one fire and he didn’t know where he was and his throat burned and he couldn’t breathe- he couldn’t, he couldn’t stay awake. Something was swallowing him, engulfing him in fire. Something was pulling him away from himself.

“What-,” he managed to wheeze out. He pulled against his restraints as pain ripped threw him, starting his head and radiating throughout his whole body.

“We decided to give you a helping hand, Stiles. To help you find power. Well, to help the void find power again."

"The void?"

Theo cracked his knuckles casually, as if he were explaining what his plans for the weekend would be rather than some life-altering explanation. Stiles had a hard time focusing on what Theo was saying through the ringing in his ears. This, if what Theo was saying was true, this would be the worst possible thing.

"I believe the someone said once you were more Stiles than Nogitsune. No one ever said he had left. You are the void's favorite subject. That's all. You're him," Theo cut a sharp glance to Stiles, "He's you."

_ He's you. _

__

Stiles’s head rolled back as his eyes into his skull.

__

* * *

_ WhEN iS a DoOR NoT a DoOR? _

__

_ WHEN IS A DOOR NOT A DOOR? _

__

_ when is a door not a door? _

__

_ When is a door not a- _

__

_ When is a door not- _

__

_ Wake up. _

__

_ A door? _

__

_ Wake UP. _

__

_ When it’s ajar. _

* * *

__

Everything was quiet. Still. Quiet. Void drew his head forward. Blood dripped down its face. It licked it. It tasted of fear.

Theo stood in front of him.

“There he is,” he said quietly. It was almost a whisper, dull and gentle. “There’s void Stiles.”

Void felt something bubble up in his chest. A sound came out of its throat, an ugly, wet, horrible sound, like blood gurgling from a festering wound. Laughter. Void was here. It looked up to the ceiling, adjusting to the body.

“Chaos has come again.”

**Author's Note:**

> One more chapter. It was written as a one-shot, but I didn't like the pacing.
> 
> If you read my other stories, I promise they aren't abandoned. I'm just in Africa doing doctor stuff and it's hard to have the energy at the end of the day to write. I just want to eat and go to bed lmao. Next part will be up soon! Other chapters of other stories will be updating soon, most likely Grey's first and then the Malec one.
> 
> hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think. 
> 
> xoxo,  
> rlb190


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